5 Die in Kabul Suicide Blast; U.S. Gunfire Kills Afghan

By BARRY BEARAK

Published: June 17, 2007

A suicide bomber driving a taxi set off his explosives near a convoy of United States civilian contractors and accompanying soldiers here Saturday morning, killing himself and four bystanders, the Kabul police said. One of his intended targets was wounded.

Within hours, American soldiers fired into a crowd of Afghans near the scene of the blast, killing one man and wounding another, according to a United States military spokesman, Lt. Col. David A. Accetta.

''It was an unfortunate incident, and we are investigating the cause of the accidental discharge of a weapon,'' he said.

Witnesses said the shooting victim was a truck driver named Aziz. ''I had just sold him three Pepsis and a phone card, and he was sitting on this bench inserting the card into his cellphone,'' said Farhad Sherzad, a shopkeeper.

Nervous American soldiers have fired into crowds repeatedly of late in Afghanistan, and suicide attacks have resulted in civilian casualties. This was the fifth suicide bombing this year in heavily patrolled Kabul, but more than 50 others have tormented the nation in a campaign of terror for which the Taliban have claimed responsibility. A similar explosion on Friday killed 10 people, including five children and a Dutch soldier, in southern Uruzgan Province.

''The suicide bombers hate Americans, but they end up killing ordinary people,'' said Rahmatullah, an anguished man selling lumber along busy Company Road in western Kabul, where the explosion Saturday occurred about 8:30 a.m.

The bomber's torso lay nearby in front of a carpenter's stall, having landed beside a barrel of water and a woodpile about 50 feet from where he had set off his device. His right arm and left leg were the only appendages still attached to his decapitated body, which had been covered with a thin black cloth.

The blast scooped the asphalt from a section of the road. Twisted auto parts were spit in every direction. The body of Muhammad Yaseen lay beside a mangled minibus. He had been a passenger in the vehicle, paying the equivalent of 60 cents a moment before at a bustling terminal.

The driver of the minibus, Muhammad Arif, found it hard to believe the good fortune of his own survival. He was not only unhurt, but unsoiled, the creases still crisp in his well-pressed blue shirt. Mr. Yaseen had been only a few feet behind him in a seat that ended up soaked with blood. ''God surely saved me,'' said the dazed driver.

One of the other victims of the explosion was a day laborer named Mustaffah who had been pushing a wheelbarrow filled with firewood. Bystanders congregated around his remains, wondering why mortal fate had selected Mustaffah and not them.

''We all heard the blast, and everything shook,'' said Abdul Ghafor, a carpenter. ''I'm fine, as you see. But my friends, just a few feet away, were injured.''

The forceful Taliban military offensive that United States and NATO commanders had predicted for spring has not occurred. But suicide attacks, rare in Afghanistan only two years ago, have since created enough fear among the general populace to cause thousands to flee for neighboring Pakistan or Iran.

Later on Saturday, an explosive device killed a day laborer and wounded 14 other people at a crowded bazaar in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, police there said.

Photo: Relatives grieved yesterday for a man shot by American forces in Kabul. He was shot after a suicide bombing that killed five Afghans. (Photo by Massoud Hossaini/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images)